Google stops censorship in China sparking concerns over US ties

Tuesday 23rd March 2010

China has said a decision by Google to stop censoring search results in the country will not damage US-Chinese relations, unless the issue becomes a political one.

Google announced today that it would be redirecting Chinese search engine results to Hong Kong (Google.com.hk), where results are unrestricted, violating China's tight censorship laws.

Earlier this year an alleged cyber attack on Google, traced back to China, saw the search engine consider pulling out of the country all together. Its decision today to pull out of the mainland country has sparked concern that US ties with China could be damaged.

David Drummond, Google's senior vice president and chief legal officer, posted a statement confirming the search engine switch, stating: "We believe this new approach of providing uncensored search in simplified Chinese from Google.com.hk is a sensible solution to the challenges we've faced — it's entirely legal and will meaningfully increase access to information for people in China.

"We very much hope that the Chinese government respects our decision, though we are well aware that it could at any time block access to our services."

The changes mean users in China are automatically redirected to the Chinese-language service based in Hong Kong, where Google is not legally required to censor searches. It is hoped that this move will keep allowing users access to Google in China, which represents a huge part of the global market.

In January, US secretary of state Hillary Clinton said that the alleged cyber attack on Google would have "consequences", but the country hit back angrily, saying her comments were "information imperialism".

Responding to the news, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang told a regular press conference that the Google case is "just a business case and will not damage the image of China".

In a statement he went on to describe the attempts to link the case to Chinese-US relations as "making a fuss" and "overstating the issue".

Mr Drummond added in his own statement on behalf of Google: "Finally, we would like to make clear that all these decisions have been driven and implemented by our executives in the United States, and that none of our employees in China can, or should, be held responsible for them.

"Despite all the uncertainty and difficulties they have faced since we made our announcement in January, they have continued to focus on serving our Chinese users and customers. We are immensely proud of them." ADNFCR-1783-ID-19683536-ADNFCR

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